Connecticut western news., 1887-07-06
MARROW NUBIA.
A Great Strip of Country
 Which Borders the Nile.
Sights Among tha Most Religious of all
 Mohammedans.

III MOEauueuduA
 Egypt, writes correspondent of the Cleveland Leader, has been dubbed a land about five miles wide, but Nubia is nearer five rods. Still, if one calls the desert l;nl, both countries have an abundant supply. It is the Nile that" makes whatever cultivable soil there is, and in flatter Egypt Exclusive of course, of the Delta there is often a green ex- panse quite wide enough to give the landscape smiling aspect. As for Nu- bia, the river must crowd itself through a more hily region whose black, forbid ding rocks spread themselves like rusty mourning all over the country, and we'll she may be in mourning, with but the narrow, ribbon-like strip of mud which the river has deposited against the hill- sides for the poor inhabitant to use. Along the Nubian Nile, therefore, villages are less numerous than in Egypt, it often being days jour ncy from one to another. They must too, stand away from the river; huddled between the hills are they, or back in the desert, lest an inch of the precious mud be lost. The native, thus rudely thrust forth from his but hardly subsisting mother country, has to seek employment in the richer low lands, and at Cairo one is continually encountering him looking desperately uncomfortable in a semi European cress. He is greatly in de- mand there for service as porter, water carrier, or house servant, for which, though he may not have Egyptian acutc- ness, his undeniable patience and honesty we'll fit him. This narrow, scanty land of Nubia, really reclaimed from Nile washings, might be quite de- stroycd by its immense environment of shifting sand, on the one side from the Arabian, on the other from tho Lbyan desert, four times as large, were it not for two constantly working in- stitutions. The first, the shaduf, is an
 
 ing basket-b buckets which are filled by fellah, then raised by means of pole and weight, the water falling into trough, which is quickly scooped out by the buckets of second worker standing above, who sends the water into yet higher trough, and so into canals which {rri +o h1 low tion is the sakiyeh, wheel, to whose revolving spokes arc fastened earthcn jars which fill in the river and then are raised until they ladle their contents into an artificial reservoir. Oxen turn the transverse wheel crank, and, as no oil is ever used, the pitiless creak of wood against wood goes on unremittingly night and day.
 But of all sights here, the fellah him. self is the most interesting. This "cut- ter" or blower, in Egypt looks exactly the same as the bas-relicfs show the fel- lah of ancient times to have been, broad -shouldered, narrow-hipped indi- vidual, with arather taking bronze con- plexion. Here in Nubia, though, these blackamoors, with their woolly hair, thick, protruding lips, and fiat noses, however good their figures, are the visi- ble signs that we have reached lower grade of intelligence. Their language is one derived from purely African sources; but the scant garments of the "vilc race of Cush' speaks for the eli mate rather than the lower social scale.
 The Nubian, whose country numbers not single Christian, is of all Moham- medans, the most religious. If anything surprises him he quickly says: "What wonders God docs," or, 'Allah is mighty" The very watcr. carrier going along the street cries, 70 may God re- ward me-" and the night watchman: 'l extol the perfection of Living King, who slcepcth not nor dicth." But above all deyout is he, as five times day he spreads his prayer rug and washes face, feet, and hands at the voice of Belaps successors from the minaret. A vail seems that voice, rising and falling, and dying away like the wind, breathing, Great is Allah" There is no other God but he, and Mohammed is his prophet. Come unto prayer, come unto salvation. There is no God but the Lord, while at break of day may be heard the addi- tional admonition, "Prayer is better than sleep"
 A strange custom is that the houses (which are built out of sun- dried clay bricks, or of no bricks at all but simply the sun dried clay,) falling to pieces, are rarely repaired, but left to resolve again into their original Nile mud, and new ones constructed. These, however, look old en ough in their most youthful youth, and are ornamentcd, the best o1 them, with row of water jugs as { cornice, and covered with thatch and mud. They look ugly and hot enough, too, to-day, as they arc unfragrant, fol the very ground is aiding the sun in giving forth heat. Only the shade i bearable; the sand is like walking ol an oven.
 Leave Absintho Habit.
 It is stated that tho habit of drinking